Can ‘China’s Facebook’ win back its millennial users with nostalgia?

Guangxi resident Zeng Mou first got his Renren account in 2006. The Chinese social networking site was part of daily life for the college student, who would regularly post photos and engage with his friends on the platform.

Fourteen years down the road, the now 33-year-old civil servant still logs on daily “just out of habit,” but there is hardly anyone to engage with; “nobody uses it,” he said of the once-popular platform that was known as “China’s Facebook.”

Photo credit: Renren

Old-timers such as Zeng, who have been hoping for the revival of the platform, have some reason to cheer now though – Renren launched its first social networking mobile app last Monday in a bid to attract new users after years of losing ground to more mobile-focused social platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. The homegrown platform’s attempt to make a comeback in China’s social space comes amid fiercer competition for young audiences from Chinese internet giants such as Tencent, Baidu, and the Post’s parent company, Alibaba.

The beta version of the app, available on both Apple and Android phones in China since last Monday, harks back to its original design before multiple unsuccessful attempts by the platform to reinvent itself – including becoming primarily a livestreaming site and sidelining its social networking functions in recent years. Like Facebook, which it is often compared to, Renren’s classic design features blue and white as its signature colors and has similar timeline, photo, and post functions.

On its launch Renren’s new app quickly gained traction, climbing 138 notches within a day to become the eighth most downloaded iOS app in China, although it fell to 13th place a day later, according to App Annie.

Unveiled in 2005, a year after Facebook, Renren’s original name was Xiaonei, meaning “on campus” in Chinese. As its name suggested, Xiaonei was mainly known for connecting schoolmates and alumni just like Facebook was in its early years.

About a year after its launch, Xiaonei’s founding team – including Wang Xing, who went on to start China’s leading on-demand services platform Meituan Dianping – sold the platform to Oak Pacific Interactive. It was subsequently rebranded as Renren, or “everyone” in Chinese, and its target audience was expanded to the general public.

It had a high-profile initial public offering in New York in 2011, with a 28.6% surge on the first trading day bringing its market cap up to US$7.4 billion, surpassing Sina and NetEase – then China’s biggest internet portals.

But it started falling out of favor around 2014, when smartphones became widely used and its millennial audience started flocking to other platforms such as multipurpose mobile app WeChat and Twitter-like microblog Weibo.

Renren’s monthly active users have been steadily dropping in past years, from 57 million at its peak in March 2013 to 31 million as of March 2018, the most recent figures available. Its stock price has also nosedived, from US$18.01 on that first trading day nine years ago to US$0.94 last Friday.

In November 2018, Renren sold its social networking assets to Beijing Infinities Interactive Media for roughly US$60 million, including US$20 million in cash and shares with a cash consideration of US$40 million. The New York-listed Renren Inc now focuses on automobile and real estate businesses, while its social networking platform of the same name is entirely owned by Beijing Infinities.

In a statement on December 30 last year, Renren said it aimed to put students back at the heart of its strategy. But observers and users have doubts over whether this back-to-school approach is a smart move.

Independent internet analyst Ge Jia, who has been watching the industry for two decades, pointed out Renren faces fiercer competition compared to its heyday in the early 2010s.